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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Resolutions

Every January I sit around and watch people make their New Year's Resolutions. I consider making one for myself, and the first thing that comes to mind is "Loose Weight. Lots of it." Then I remember that, in order for it to truly be maintainable, a goal has to be measurable. Ok , "loose 100 lbs." I'm a tubby little greenie (woah, did anyone else just think of oompa loompas?) and could really use it. But you see, a. that seems insurmountable and b. I love food and hate excercise. Bad combo for loosing weight. How did you think I got this way in the first place?

Needless to say, I have a bad relationship with resolutions but here I am (almost into February) laying some out anyways. Hopefully this'll help get me out of my snowed-in blues.

Continue to find sustainable ways to make my lifestyle more healthy and better for the planet. If I have learned anything in the past year, it is that small sustainable steps will last longer than depriving yourself of everything you love.

Start an indoor herb garden. My house has a serious shortage of south-facing windows, but we just made the kitchen one more plant-friendly and that's something I can do this winter to ease my antsiness.

Can, Freeze and otherwise preserve enough food to last through the winter next year. I'm not talking about living the completely sustainable & locovorian lifestyle of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" but here i am in January with 2 bags of unprocessed tomatoes, 2 bags of shredded zucchini, one bag of banana peppers too small to stuff and 2 jars of violet jelly, and it's been that way for a while. I at least want to have enough of the foods we do can to last me through the winter.

Overhaul the way we compost. The last 2 summers, we had been composting on top of our potatoes. In November we at least created a separate bin and started thinking about our "brown to green ratio" but I want to do some serious composting this summer, maybe incorporating worms.

Create menus less dependent on meat. The bear is going to run out this year, there is just no way around it and I really need to learn to create menus less meat-focused. We don't need meat at every meal, or even close and 2/3 of that meat doesn't need to be red. I think it'll be really good for us to move away from that, even if it means poor nick goes through meat withdrawl.